Politics in Venezuela is no longer a contest between a train and a bicycle. Now there are two trains, and the Socialist party and the opposition might be crazy enough now to crash into each other and smash the whole country.

Joanna Hausmann gets it. She has a Jewish last name, red hair and has been compared to a Pixar cartoon. But she's not a white girl from Iowa. She's a Venezuelan comic who jokes about our ideas of race.

Updated

02/28/2014 - 12:00pm

The United States is working with Colombia and other countries to see whether mediation might be possible to bring opposing sides in Venezuela's crisis together for talks, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday.